A week passed on the road. Seven days of the exact same rhythm: step, breathe, the crunch of dry branches underfoot.
Here and there we came across trees with twisted branches or patches of earth where the grass grew roots-up.
My shoulder had completely healed. The new armor, "version 2.1," worked flawlessly. The braided cords I used to replace the rigid fasteners provided exactly the degree of freedom I needed. Now, when I moved, the bone plates didn't dig into my body—they slid smoothly along with my muscles.
"Will to Live" was dormant. In a way, I had learned to keep it in a deep hibernation, allowing it to flash signals only occasionally.
"We're close," Zeno said curtly.
We came upon a temporary camp set up in a hollow between two rocky hills. It looked nothing like the fortified hunter settlements we'd seen before. It was more like an outpost hastily cobbled together from tents, stakes, and a few protective amulets driven into the dirt.
Three people met us. They had been sitting around a campfire with a small pot hanging over it, but they rose in unison as we appeared.
"Zeno?" the oldest of them, a man with graying stubble and a heavy gaze, took his hand off the hilt of a short sword. "You old fox, I thought you'd dissolved into your wilderness long ago."
"Don't hold your breath, Kyle," Zeno smirked, walking up to the fire. "I brought you some help. We need to pass through the Blind Sector, and I heard you have a sweep scheduled there."
Kyle's gaze swept over me.
Next to him stood the other two: a tall woman with thin, constantly moving fingers—clearly a sensor—and a massive guy whose arms were covered in protective tattoos all the way to his elbows.
"A kid?" the woman frowned. "Zeno, we're heading toward the Pulsator. Why do we need this dead weight?"
"This dead weight reads the structure of anomalies faster than any amulets, Rina," Zeno replied calmly. "And he's no 'kid.'"
I just stepped aside slightly, listening to the hum of the Pulsator echoing from somewhere beyond the hills. "Will to Live" stirred faintly inside me, recognizing the threat.
"Fine," Kyle nodded clippedly. "We move out in ten minutes. We need to seal the point before it hits resonance. Kid," he looked at me, "if you fall behind or get scared, we leave you behind. Team rules."
"Got it," I replied.
Moving in a group turned out to be harder than surviving solo. It was an entire science of vector synchronization. Kyle led the way, cleaving major spikes of energy with his stabilizer sword. Rina constantly scanned the area, sending out short pulses of mana that bounced back with data on air density. Bram—the big guy—brought up the rear, maintaining a passive protective dome around us.
I walked between Zeno and Bram.
My job was to keep my head down, but I couldn't just blindly follow them. My mind automatically synchronized with their system. I could see where Bram's dome thinned over the uneven terrain, and I felt how Rina's pulses stumbled against invisible barriers.
We pressed deeper into the Blind Sector. The trees turned into translucent columns, and the ground beneath our feet shifted from soft sand to solid metal.
"Heads up," Rina commanded. "Distorter ahead. Type—wandering."
Out of the fog, as if through a torn wound in space, something drifted out. A cluster of geometric planes, fragments of flesh, and sparking arcs, chaotically thrown together into a mass the size of a horse. It moved in jerks, shifting its shape every second.
"Bram, hold it! Rina—lock it down!" Kyle shouted.
Bram slammed his fists into the ground; his tattoos flared blue. The dome around us thickened, taking the brunt of the Distorter's first strike. Rina threw her hands up, and glowing threads shot from her fingers, attempting to anchor the anomaly to a single point in space.
"To the left!" I shouted, breaking the silence. "The assembly point is shifted fifteen degrees left of center! You're hitting a phantom!"
Kyle hesitated for a split second, but Rina instantly redirected her threads. They bit into what looked like empty space, and the Distorter gained density.
"The kid's right!" Bram wheezed, holding the dome under a hail of blows. "Finish it, Kyle!"
Kyle lunged forward. His sword flashed white. One precise strike into the core—which I highlighted with a brief pulse of mana—and the anomaly collapsed into a pile of junk.
The world fell silent for a moment. Kyle breathed heavily, hands resting on his knees. The sword in his grip slowly cooled down.
"How did you know?" Rina asked, coming closer and wiping sweat from her forehead.
"Its mana was creating an echo. You were aiming at the source of the sound, not what was emitting it."
Zeno, standing a bit further off, smirked into his beard but said nothing.
An hour later, we reached the Pulsator. It was a gruesome sight. A massive, pulsing cluster of blue-black energy hovered in a small depression. It expanded and contracted like a mechanical heart, and with each "beat," a wave rolled through the forest, causing leaves to instantly wither and turn to ash.
"If we don't ground it now, in half an hour there'll be a hole in space the size of a city here," Kyle said, checking his amulets. "Here's the plan: Bram and Rina hold the containment perimeter. I'll head to the center and drive in the stabilizing pin. Zeno, cover the rear. Kid... stand here and watch the flows. If the perimeter wavers, yell."
They began. Magic flowed in streams, aligning into complex geometric patterns. Bram and Rina froze at the edge of the hollow, holding the energy grid. Kyle, staggering under the monstrous pressure, made his way down with a heavy, rune-covered metal rod.
I watched, feeling "Will to Live" start to stir. The pressure in the zone was off the charts. My vessels throbbed, and a characteristic high-pitched whine of overload filled my ears.
"Warning. Surrounding environment critically unstable. Defensive activation recommended."
"No," I whispered. "Too soon."
Kyle was five meters from the center when the Pulsator let out a discharge. Rina's grid snapped. Bram fell to one knee, his tattoos smoking, burning his skin. Kyle was simply thrown onto the rocks.
"Hold it!" Rina screamed, trying to restore the weave, but her fingers shook with exhaustion.
I realized that if I didn't step in right now, we would all be vaporized. I immediately bolted forward.
"Iron, stop!" Zeno yelled, but ignoring him, I activated "Will to Live" at thirty percent. The world turned gray. I saw the energy flows like field lines on a blueprint. Rina's perimeter was sagging in sector 4-B. Bram was losing his grounding.
Without hesitating, I grabbed Bram by his burned forearm.
"Use me as a shunt!" I shouted. "Dump the excess through my channels! My armor is insulated!"
The big guy gave me a wild look, but there was no choice. He rerouted the flow.
My reinforced vessels groaned. The armor vibrated, the bone plates clicking as they took in and redistributed the colossal energy. The dampers I had carved with such effort at night were working at their limit—they cushioned the kickback, keeping my spine from shattering into dust.
Through me, Bram's mana bled off into the ground, stabilizing the overall field. This bought Rina the few seconds she needed to patch the breach in the grid.
"Kyle, now! Strike!" I rasped. A white shroud danced before my eyes—a dangerous sign. My body was burning up.
Kyle, bloody but alive, scrambled to his feet and with one powerful motion drove the pin into the very heart of the pulsing core.
A bright flash. Silence.
I unclasped my fingers and collapsed to my knees. "Will to Live" shut down instantly. Every nerve screamed from overload. A sharp, stabbing pain flared in my shoulder.
"How... how are you even alive?" Bram panted, looking at his hands, which were no longer smoking. "A current passed through you that should have turned you to ash."
I tried to answer, but only a dry wheeze escaped my throat. I just gave a thumbs-up with my trembling right hand.
Kyle stepped closer, wiping blood from his chin. He looked at the quieted Pulsator, then at me.
"Zeno," Kyle turned to the approaching old man. "Where did you find him?"
"He found himself," Zeno helped me up, tossing his cloak over my shoulders.
By evening, we were sitting in the same camp. But the atmosphere had changed. Rina was rubbing cooling salve onto the burns on my arms, while Bram was ladling the best cuts of meat from the pot onto my plate.
"You made a mistake, kid," Kyle said quietly, sitting down next to me. "That could have killed you. Putting yourself under a direct stream... Are you out of your mind?"
"I calculated the risk," I replied, feeling the cool salve soothe my skin. "Without intervention, we wouldn't have survived."
Kyle grinned. "Rational son of a bitch."
I closed my eyes.
There's a long road ahead, new anomalies, and most likely even more pain. God, it's so annoying, I thought to myself.
"Sleep," Zeno's voice was remarkably soft. "You're going to need your strength."
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